for the cowboy, whose face was warrant that he
was a simple, harmless fellow when sober, was dragging on his gun, when
one came hastening in past the girl.

This was a no less important person than the new city marshal, whom
Morgan had seen without knowing his official standing, as he arrived at
the hotel.

"This man's raisin' a fuss here--he's tore the register--look what he's
done--tore the register!" the indignant girl charged.

"You're arrested," said the marshal. "Come on."

The cowboy stood mouthing his cigar, a weak look of scorn and derision
in his flushed face. His right hand was still on his pistol, the wadded
page of the register in the other.

"You'd better take his gun," Morgan suggested to the marshal, "he's so
drunk he might hurt himself with it."

Seth Craddock fixed Morgan a moment with his sullen red eyes, in which
the sneer of his heart seemed to speak. But his lips added nothing to
the insult of that disdainful look. He jerked his head toward the door
in command to his prisoner to march.

"Come out! I'll fight both of you!" the cowboy challenged, making for
the door. He was squarely in it, one foot lifted in his drunken
balancing to step down, when Seth Craddock jerked out his pistol between
the lifting and the falling of that unsteady foot, and shot the
retreating man in the back. The cowboy pitched forward into the street,
where he lay stretched and motionless, one spurred foot still in the
door.

Morgan sprang forward with an exclamation of shocked protest at this
unjustified slaughter, while the girl, her blue eyes wide in horror,
shrunk against the counter, hands pressed to her cheeks, a cry of
outraged pity ringing from her lips.

"Resist an officer, will you?" said the city marshal, as he strode
forward and looked down on the first victim in Ascalon of the woeful
harvest his pistol was to reap. So saying, as if publishing his
justification, he sheathed his weapon and walked out, as little moved as
if he had shot the bottom out of a tomato can in practice among friends.

A woman came hastening from the back of the house with dough on her
hands, a worn-faced woman, whose eyes were harried and afraid as if they
had looked on violence until horror had set its seal upon them. She
exclaimed and questioned, panting, frantic, holding her dough-clogged
fingers wide as she bent to look at the slain man in her door.

"It was the new marshal Judge Thayer was in here with just after
dinner,"